Special issue “Recent Advances in MST and EISCAT/Ionospheric Studies – Special Issue of the Joint MST15 and EISCAT18 Meetings, May 2017”

Abstract

The Fifteenth Workshop on Technical and Scientific Aspects of MST Radar (MST15) and the Eighteenth EISCAT Symposium (EISCAT18) were jointly held in Tokyo, Japan, at the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) during May 26–31, 2017. The MST workshops have a long history of being the primary international meetings on the applications and development of mesosphere–stratosphere–troposphere (MST) radars. The MST workshop has been historically focusing on the atmospheric dynamics but is now including topics related to ionospheric applications of radars. The EISCAT Symposium, on the other hand, is the biennial conference for EISCAT-related radar research and science which is hosted by member institutions of the EISCAT Scientific Association.<p><p>

This joint MST15/EISCAT18 meeting was a timely opportunity for close and extensive interactions of the middle-atmosphere and ionospheric radar scientists in our era of rapid technological changes and computational advances. The joint meeting was successfully attended by 182 participants from 19 countries/areas and hosted 233 presentations. These numbers were the maximum level ever for either conferences.<p><p>

This special issue gathered 15 papers from this joint meeting, consisting of ten full papers, three frontier/express letters and two technical reports. The flexible publication style of Earth, Planets and Space benefitted us to cover easily both scientific and technical aspects of the research field. In the following, we categorize the articles into several groups and review them briefly.